Exactly Why Don't You Believe In the God of the Bible?

The Abrahamic god is Man, writ large.

Brandon9000 Wrote:

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What does anyone consider to be evidence of anything in life? Something that suggests that it might be true. An absence of illnesses in the Popes. Someone worthy about to die who is saved in a way that looks like intervention. 25 people who all see precisely the same divine visitation. In short, anything at all that suggests that there is a God. You bring me anything at all that is hard to explain any way except for the existence of God, and I will take it as evidence.

Let me ask you this, Brandon, do you really think that if this happened, that someone somewhere would not come up with a perfectly logical explanation for it?

Wouldn't this miracle have to be something that would specifically have meaning to you and you only? Wouldn't it have to be something that you and you alone actually KNEW was from God?

dyslexia Wrote:

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nature=what is-is=physical reality=rational=physics

unnatural=what isn't-is==irrational=meta-physical=religion.

Aint no way around this mother no matter how sincere you are or aren't. I suspect you're only giving yourself and others a headache that will come to naught. I also suspect you will not cease and desist so the least I can do is to find you amusing.

I understand what you are saying about the proof and such. But, what I guess I don't understand is what is the underlying reason for wanting the proof? There are obviously those that have the need for proof and those that don't. What is it in you that makes you want the proof? I can only ask this question because since I don't require the proof I don't know what it feels like to require it. The only way I can get this answer is to ask those that need the proof. I want to understand this.

And I guess I won't quit until I get an answer! So, hopefully, you will be amused along the way. :wink:

Most of us only want some evidence.

Momma Angel:

The following is by Penn Jillette for a NPR Series called This I Believe
I think you would like the series. This one by Jillette is as close to a statement of my present thinking as I will ever come.
You can treat his words as mine. Enjoy. JN

"I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?"

"So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy"

"But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

"Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

"Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around."

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

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Most of us only want some evidence.

You can want for as long as you want.It's a free country.But there will be no evidence forthcoming however long you want.Not now,not ever.

You either got faith or you got unbelief
There ain't no neutral ground.

Bob Dylan. I think it's Precious Angel.

No, just irrelevant. If you need to believe that he was God then it is important. To me, it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't, so the emphasis on his death and our sins is misplaced and distracts from actually finding God.

I know.But defining yourself to be wrong is invalid as well.

That seemed right when it shot through but it looks stupid now.

What do you think?

For me it is more of a matter of not believing in organized religion. I think there are some very good moral lessons to be leared from christianity that are worth teaching.

What bothers me is the whole "being a christian" thing. I attended many churches of different denominations growing up and the thing they all had in common was this fake, competitive notion of being a good christian. Instead of doing something good to help somebody, they do the act because it is what god would have wanted.

Beyond that, I feel that instead of people learning the lessons of the bible and filtering them through their decision making process and applying them to their life and everyday decisions, they make them their life. It is the whole WWJD mantra that takes away peoples individuality and causes the intolerance often seen in christians towards those with other beliefs.

This thread irritates me, I must admit. Isn't the issue all about belief? Either one believes or one does not.

There's no list of things that have to happen to make a person believe. It's like love: I know she doesn't love me, but if I change my hairdo or my clothes, maybe she will.

It doesn't work that way. Why not leave it at that?

proof? I mentioned proof? Try is one more time MA;
What is----IS
What isn't---ISN'T.

Why I don't believe in the Abrahamic God. Here are a few reasons.

1. The Abrahamic view of the Universe and natural law, is too far removed from what has been discovered with the Scientific Method. Biblical accounts of creation, divine intervention in human affairs and the natural order (miracles) are so far fetched as to be totally unbelievable. The Universe is much more complicated and complex than Abrahamic religion provides for. Specifically, I do not believe in a finite universe. The Universe is infinite, without edges, without beginning or ending. Ergo, the Universe is the sum total of everything, it is Totality from the most minute to the grandest scale.

2. The Abrahamic god is Man, writ large. The religions of Abraham generally accept that Man is made in god's image, and is the height of god's creation. Man is more important than the earth, the seas, the sun and stars? Man, the little god, of Creation is more important than any and all other life forms? As flawed as Man is, from that we can scale up to a truly terrible notion of what the Abrahamic god would be. The Abrahamic god is given to human emotions … so should Man be less jealous, less greedy, less merciless than his god?

3. The Abrahamic god is supposed to be omnipotent. That means that god is all knowing and without limitations. "He" must be able to "see" all behavior and the consequences to behavior to the "end of time". This can only mean that behavior is fixed and unalterable, otherwise it would be unknowable how each thought, word and action would turnout. In such a zero-sum system, free will is not possible. This leaves us with one of many contradictions where two opposing ideas/concepts can not be reconciled. The logic is fatally flawed.

4. The proof of the pudding. How has the Abrahamic notion of religion and god affected the world? The ancient history of Judaism if enacted today might be called genocide, and always the justification was that it was god's will and the most terrible destruction occuring in some instances with god's active participation. The teachings of Christ seem to be a step forward toward tolerance, but that isn't how things turned out, is it? Even early Christians were intolerant of any religious doctrines that conflicted with their parochial views. The destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria was more the work of fanatical Christians than anything, the Muslims just finished the job later. Christianity did mitigate some of the brutality of the Vikings and other warlike barbarian tribes. Once dominant in Europe, Christianity grabbed power and was intolerant of any departure from strict doctrines. Intolerance wasn't just refusal to rent an apartment to heretics, they were burned alive to save their souls.

Islam was born and from the very beginning was even more dedicated to the idea that they alone knew and conformed to the will of god. It didn't take very long before militant Islam was on the move conquering and enslaving those who were infidels. And who were the infidels in question? The Christian Byzantine Empire was a rich prize, even it they held similar theological doctrines and worshiped the same single god. Christian Europe came to the "rescue" by sacking the Imperial City, but then they were fair game being "Orthodox" Christians. That left the Roman Christians and Islam to slug it out over what was largely empty desert.

Christianity became more and more corrupt and greedy for wealth and power, until a Reformation movement began. During the wars of the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, all Europe was ablaze. The Reformers quickly divided themselves into smaller sects, each intolerant of all others and willing to kill over the smallest point of theology. It was in the name of Christianity that the Spanish enslaved, murdered and robbed the Indians of Mexico and South America while saving their souls by the sword. Christianity marched forward to convert all the heathen peoples of the world, whether they wanted to convert or not. Christian prudery dismissed local customs and cultures as backward idol worshiping and did its best to impose Christian values. Chauvinism and the Abrahamic god have always been close companions.

The political struggles between liberal Western values, Fascism, and Communism always had its religious component, but after WWII, the political basis for war in the Middle East became almost totally supplanted by religious intolerance between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Isn't it the religious intolerance of fundamentalist Muslims, Jews and Christians that lies at the heart of today's problems in Southwest Asia?

These are the fruits of monotheism based on the Abrahamic idea of god. This is religion has been the source of immeasurable suffering and war, it has excused the most terrible of crimes, and is the foundation of chauvinism that prevents any real ecumenical effort with other world religions. It is a blight on human history and one of the great dangers to our very survival.

5. There are better alternatives, I believe in Buddhist doctrines and teachings that pretty much conform to the discoveries of science and modern physics. There isn't much conflict between Buddhist views of Emptiness of Ultimate Reality coupled with an Infinite Universe (without beginning or ending), and the Universe described by scientists and mathematicians. Buddhism doesn't encourage chauvinism, and doesn't make Mankind the monarch of all things. It is not antithetical to other religious movements, but has a long history of working peacefully with and along side of other religious/cultural conceptions. Buddhism is "inner-directed", that is it urges each individual to improve themselves by rooting out the urges toward self-gratification.